Time Management Tuesday: Slow Writing In November Instead Of NaNoWriMo?

Another month has begun, this one with a strong temporal landmark attached to it for writers, National Novel Writing Month.  It appears that I started dabbling in NaNoWriMo twenty years ago, though I didn't start dwelling on the subject until 2016. Then I wrote about it quite a bit.

Well, poor old NaNoWriMo has been experiencing some troubles the last couple of years. I thought I'd written about them here a few months ago, but, nope. I will explain to the extent that I can:

1. NaNoWriMo has forums, which I've never been part of for what that's worth. But an issue arose with how forums were being moderated, particularly forums for young writers. 
2. NaNoWriMo is taking a position of neutrality on the use of AI in writing. The...discord...around NaNoWriMo's original statement on the subject came up a couple of months ago. 

I mention all this because it's November and National Novel Writing Month and we all want to keep up on what's going on in the writing world, non? Also, it leads into an article by Shaunta Grimes on slow writing. 

NaNoWriMo Is Fast, But I Am Slow

I mean, I am seriously slow. So you can understand why I was interested when I saw Shaunta Grimes' The Write Brain article, I'm officially done with NaNoWriMo. Lets start a Slow Writing Movement back in September. 

She's creating a program and community called Book-a-Year Project that involves writing a book over a year, instead of a month. Her plan includes creating a writing practice. There will be mentoring letters and daily links to a poem, an essay, and short story to read. There's a monthly book club. And more.

This sounds fantastic, even though I am shifting toward writing short form work instead of novels. What I particularly like about Grimes' plan is that it actually offers things to do, versus talking about taking care of yourself and smelling the flowers. Both of which, I'd like to point out, take time. I was excited as I read about her article

And then I began to feel overwhelmed. This is too much for me. Because, remember, I am truly slow. I get daily Book Riot emails with lists of ebooks on sale, and I can't keep up with those. There's a monthly subscription involved with the Book-a-Year Project, so I hadn't even gotten involved yet and I, a truly slow person, was feeling pressure because I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep up on something I was paying for.

But I love the idea of slow writing and have written here before about trying to find ways to do slow work. So I am inspired now to do more research on this. November, I feel, is a perfect time to be thinking about doing something new, because maybe I can have a plan in place for me for the new year.

The new year being a temporal landmark and all.

Just in: I had a perhaps serendipitous thing happen today that could impact my slow work studies. I'll let you know for sure next week.

Time Management Tuesday: A Summer Reading Arc On Essentialism

Here comes one of our periodic time management book discussions. Last week I started reading Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. While I wish I could recall how I learned of this book, I cannot.

In the past, I have written here about trying to find ways to do more by slowing down. I'm hopeful that McKeown's argument that we can do less, but better will help with that. I'm finding the book well written, well organized, and well researched. This isn't just some guy's quickie throw down of his thoughts.

If I understand essentialism, it's sort of like minimalism but for work and life activities. While minimalism is about how your surroundings impact you and your time, essentialism appears to be about how your choices impact you and your time. I am, you know, a big fan of minimalism, and right now I am very open to essentialism.

More to come in the next few weeks.

Time Management Tuesday: Slowing Down With Concentrated Blocks Of Time

So a few weeks ago, I started an arc on slowing down work by using suggestions from Anne Marie O'Connor's Why You Should Be Single-Tasking, Not Multitasking & How To Make The Switch. 

I've already covered using to-do lists. In this final post I'll be writing about what O'Connor calls concentrated blocks of time. This is something I've called set-aside time.

Concentrated Blocks Of Time Can Be More Than An Hour Without Internet

O'Connor talks about shutting off unnecessary technology in order to concentrate. I'm talking about actually planning to use big chunks of time for a specific writing project or writing-related task.

• Think National Novel Writing Month
• Think the May Days Facebook Group I often take part in. 
• Think the time frame Martha Alderson uses in Boundless Creativity
• Think traditional writers' retreats 
• Think writers who teach who use school breaks as a set-aside time to get one particular project started or finished

Keep in mind you don't actually have to complete an entire project in one of these blocks. You decide what you're going to do with it. Will your block be for generating new work, just getting something started? Completing a draft? Working on scenes? Revising? The idea is to plan what you're going to do for a specific block of time and then concentrate on just that instead of running from task to task. 

I've had good luck with setting aside blocks of time this year, using May Days and Alderson's time frame to get major work done on a blueprint/outline and using June to turn out some writing for that some project. Mid-July and the first half of August have been dedicated to flash writing as part of a six-week workshop I've been involved with on that subject. I'm going to stick with that and submitting flash for the rest of the month.

I want to plan the rest of the year so that I'm dedicating blocks of time--weeks or months--to working on a specific writing or research or submission project. 

Blocks Of Time Slow You Down And Make You More Productive 

Sometimes you have to juggle multiple projects--editing one thing while submitting another or marketing still something else. But finding blocks of time you can dedicate to just one thing slows you down, because you're not racing to work on multiple tasks. And that can increase productivity, because you can see some work getting done.

Time Management Tuesday: Using To-Do Lists To Slow Down

Last week I introduced the idea of trying to eliminate multi-tasking as a way to slow down our work and actually become more productive. Anne Marie O'Connor's article, Why You Should Be Single-Tasking, Not Multitasking & How To Make The Switch provides four suggestions on how to do that. I'm going to combine three of them that I think can be helpful for writers into two blog posts. Today, people, we will cover to-do lists and prioritizing.

To-Do Lists

I am a big fan of to-do lists. Big fan. In fact, when  I'm done here, I have to work on

My modified bullet journal/to-do list

my to-do list for this week, my preferred unit of time for planning.

Writers have more control over our to-do lists than people who work in traditional situations do. We may be bound by priorities (see below) and we may have day jobs that we have to factor in. But, otherwise, for our work we have more control than people who have daily supervisors or hourly appointments to maintain.

In terms of slowing down: If something unplanned comes up, particularly something from someone else, and you can avoid doing it, avoid it. Stick to the to-do list. Many time management people will tell you to delegate whatever you can. For many writers that just isn't an option. We don't have anyone to delegate pop-up tasks to.

So avoid what you can by planning to do it another time. Put the new thing on tomorrow's to-do list or next week's or however you organize your to-dos. Particularly if you're trying to work on a long-term project, you don't want to keep going off-task to fight every short-term fire that can be taken care of another time. 

Going off task because of new tasks, increases the workload, and contributes to a feeling of being rushed and overwhelmed. None of which is going to have a good impact on productivity. So if you can slow down by putting something on another to-do list, do it.

How Do Writers Prioritize?

You're going to want to prioritize your to-do list, if only in terms of what you put on it. Be specific with your priorities, so that you know exactly what you plan to do. "Write" is more of a subject than a prioritized item on a to-do list.

To-do list priorities to consider:

• Your goals and objectives. You will recall, I'm sure, that in addition to being a fan of to-do lists, I am a fan of goals and objectives. A big fan. You've created them, because they are things you plan/need to do. You should always be checking to make sure that objectives toward your goals are part of your to-do list.
• Deadlines. Deadlines from editors or agents, if you have someone waiting for work. Those will be a top priority.
• Submission dates. Some agents and publications will open for submissions for a specific period of time. If you have someone/something like that you're interested in submitting to, keep track of the dates and whether you need to be doing anymore work on your manuscript in order to submit.
• Objective deadlines for major projects/goals. Got a big writing project you're doing on spec with no agent or editor involvement? You can create your own deadlines for it by breaking it down into the objectives you need to do in order to meet the goal of getting the project written. Those objectives can then become items on your to-do list. I'm talking things like research and even breaking that down still further into different types of research. Character development. Outlining, if you do that. Planning scenes, something I'm getting into. Then after you have an outline or scene list, items on the outline or individual scenes can become priorities that you place on your to-do list.

Presumably everything on your to-do list is some kind of priority. If you stick to working on those items, and only those items, you have a chance of keeping yourself from becoming overwhelmed and having to hurry because yourself trying to do things that just aren't necessary right now. This could be a big step toward slowing down.

Time Management Tuesday: Slowing Down By Eliminating Multitasking

For a few years now, I've wondered if slowing down could actually make us more productive.  I considered this question in:

• 2016 Could I Do More, If I Slowed Down? 
• 2017 Wasn't I Going To Do Some Research On Slowing Down?
• 2017 Slow Down, You Move Too Fast 
• 2017 Doing Less, Like Einstein
• 2018 Slow Work And Privilege
• 2018 An Autumn Read That Might Slow Down Some Of Our Work

Recently I stumbled upon Why You Should Be Single-Tasking, Not Multitasking & How To Make The Switch by Anne Marie O'Connor. She actually includes some strategies for staying with a single task. They look to me as if some of them could help with the slower work I'd like to be doing. Over the coming weeks, I'll address how they could apply specifically to writers.

The Multitasking Issue

O'Connor isn't the first person to suggest eliminating multi-tasking in order to improve productivity. The issue with multitasking is that it doesn't actually exist. Humans can't do two things at the same time, they're just switching, even if only psychologically, back and forth between tasks or thoughts. O'Connor sites research going back twenty years (meaning this isn't new news) that suggests multitasking actually slows people down. "...multitasking may seem efficient on the surface but may actually take more time in the end and involve more error. Meyer has said that even brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time." More recent information supports the idea that multitasking shouldn't be your first time management choice. (And, yes, I did notice that one of the people quoted in this article is named Gauthier.)

A simple example--Do you do other things while you're watching TV? Write blog posts, letters, journal entries? Catch up on social media? Picture yourself on your couch, with your TV in front of you and whatever other thing you're doing on your lap. Are your eyes on the TV all the time you're working on something else? Are your eyes on your laptap or phone all the time you're watching TV? No, you're switching back and forth.

And that's what happens when you think you're doing any kind of multitasking. You're not doing two things at the same time, you're switching back and forth between tasks.

 Multitasking Vs. Multipliers 

The time and productivity difficulties created by multitasking can be illustrated when comparing it to using multipliers.

With multitasking you believe you're doing more than one task at a time, but in reality you are just quickly switching from one to another. This means that at various points you're in the midst of multiple tasks, at various points you have multiple tasks uncompleted and hanging over your head. Getting a sense of rush, pressure, and overwhelm? I am.

With multipliers, instead of switching among different tasks, you're working on only one task at a time. But that one task addresses more than one goal. You'll get more than one benefit from the one task. A quick and recent example is my effort last week to write a 53-word piece of flash fiction. That one task resulted in:

• material to read at a workshop I'm attending
• material to submit to a contest
• material for a blog post (two, since I'm using it for part of this post, too)
• material on eating/food, something I've been wanting to write about for a while

You can see how much more effort I would have had to have made and pressure I would have been under if I had been trying to switch between four different tasks to get four different results.

Coming Next Week

 

Next week I'll begin discussing some of Anne Marie O'Connor's suggestions for eliminating multitasking from your work life, how they can relate specifically to writers, and how this might slow down work while making us more productive. 
 

Time Management Tuesday: An Autumn Read That Might Slow Down Some Of Our Work

I've begun reading New Minimalism: Decluttering and Design for Sustainable, Intentional Living by Cary Telander Fortin and Kyle Louise Quilici. I read about the book last spring and was interested in trying to use the information during an office purge.  Honest to God, within two weeks of writing that minimalism purge post a family member had a health crisis, and I never finished the office. With this autumn read we'll see if I move any further with that project. And whether or not some new minimalism can help create that slow work thing I've been toying with.

Why Am I Spending Time On Clutter When This Blog Feature Is About Managing Time For Writers?

 

New Minimalism deals with clutter. It's right there in the book's title. What does that have to do with time management?

1. In order to make time for work, we have to control all our time. There's a fine line between personal time and work time, and if our personal time gets out of control, it's going to spill into our work time. Check that last paragraph I wrote above about the sick family member. Dealing with a lot of material things can impact our personal time. Fortin and Quilici claim that among the benefits of a less cluttered, New Minimalist lifestyle are more free time and less "to-dos" hanging over our heads. That's time writers can use for work. And  shouldn't more free time and fewer "to-dos" mean I can slow down the work in at least my personal life?
2. Disorder in our surroundings undermines impulse control, which can impact our ability to stay on task. Disorder can be a lot of things, but clutter is one of them.
3. I'm thinking of clutter as metaphor, too. I'll get to that very soon and probably often.

Can We Agree On Clutter?

It's no longer this bad. Still...

Fortin and Quilici define clutter situationally. (I love the situational.) "...people get to determine how they want to feel in a space...and their own lifestyle needs and desires. The material items that don't support this vision are clutter."

Think about that office I was supposed to clean last summer. If I determine that I want to write in that office, all the things stored in there that aren't related to writing would be defined as clutter.

And here's an opportunity to get all metaphorical. Let's argue that anything that doesn't support a goal is clutter. Now let's argue that if we're writing and we have our main character's goal well thought out and we know our story, anything that doesn't address the goal and support the story is clutter. Maybe we can practice minimalism in writing process.

I hope I'll have more next week.

Time Management Tuesday: The Law Of Diminishing Returns And Slow Work

At last! I've found some real talk about doing less to do more.

In How To Accomplish More By Doing Less at 99U, journalist Tony Schwartz (I wrote about him here back in 2013) describes how the quality of the hours we work is as significant as the number of hours we work. "Maintaining a steady reservoir of energy – physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually – requires refueling it intermittently." As we become physically, mentally, emotionally, and, perhaps, spiritually worn out, our output becomes progressively worse. Planning a workday around rest stops can mean getting as much done, or even more, than if you kept yourself chained to your desk for a longer period of unbroken time.

Schwartz uses a study of pilots and another of violinists to support his argument.

I think it's pretty obvious how this article relates to my goal of finding ways to improve productivity by slowing down. Schwartz is literally talking about working fewer hours without a drop in output. It also relates to a couple of things discussed here in the past. (Besides Tony Schwartz.)

The Unit System

Planning your work time around stops, so you can recharge and sort of trick your mind into thinking it's starting the day over, is what author Ellen Sussman called the unit system.  Whether you break your time into 45-minute units, as I've read about several times, 20-minute units, as in the Pomodoro Technique, or 90-minute units, as Schwartz prefers, you're managing your energy as well as your time. You're making it possible to slow down and still produce.

Minimum Effective Dose

Last week, I wrote about the minimum effective dose and slow work. "In terms of productivity," I said, "the theory goes that you can find a minimum effective dose--or the minimum amount of time/effort--needed to get the work result you want or require."

Schwartz's argument about the law of diminishing returns and using work units to manage your work hours instead of working randomly sounds very much like a minimum effective dose to me.

Time Management Tuesday: Minimum Effective Dose And Slow Work

So I'm creating my own slow work program here, folks. Where to begin, where to begin?

How about with this: I don't see how someone can slow down while continuing to do the same amount of work. To slow down, I'm going to have to do less, right? But I don't want to do less. As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of a slow-down program is to do more. Or, if not actually more, to do better. How can I do less without doing less?

Minimum Effective Dose

Last year, I came upon a productivity article on minimum effective dose (MED). "In medicine, the minimum effective dose is the lowest dose of a medicine that gets you the result you need. Taking more than you need either doesn't improve things or has the potential to make your condition worse. In terms of productivity, the theory goes that you can find a minimum effective dose--or the minimum amount of time/effort--needed to get the work result you want or require."

I'm quoting myself there, by the way, and referring to a Lifehacker article.

My thinking with this minimum effective dose business as far as productivity is concerned is that there comes a point where continuing to throw time and effort at a problem/task/issue doesn't provide any benefit. Self-control is strongest first thing in the morning and decreases as we work, for instance. We become less effective as the hours pass. Working more isn't necessarily going to get you more. We'd be better off figuring out how to work more while we're most productive and less while we're not.

MED For Writers

What are some specific examples of minimum effective dose for writers' work?

• Blogging--How many posts and what kind are necessary to maintain the readership you want? What about narrowing the focus of your blog's content, so that you are spending less time and effort on it, but the work you do do has more significance? I, for instance, will rarely be doing reader responses here for the immediate future. I'll continue to focus on time management and the Connecticut writing scene, but I'd also like to use the blog to at least think about my short form writing. My hope is that since I'll be doing less, I can try to do some more significant work. 
• Europe First--You have multiple tasks you're working on. Work on whatever happens to be most important to you at that point in your life first thing in the morning, even if it means you aren't going to be able to finish it. Remember, you're going to become less effective as the day progresses. You don't want to wait 'til you're spent to get to work on something major, assuming you're able to get to it at all. This is especially important if you only have a few hours to work. If you can only do a little, slow down and make sure the little you do is on the important task. "Europe first" comes from a Forbes article describing how the strategy for fighting World War II was to win Europe, then turn to the Pacific. The point of the Forbes article being, choose your Europe. It's a strategy that could help you to slow down while remaining, or even becoming more, productive.  (Yes, that's the second analogy I've used in this post. I love them.)
• Marketing--Marketing time is a huge issue for writers. We're often throwing huge amounts of time and effort into marketing tasks even though it's difficult to tell what pays off. Our own experience, or the experience of other writers, can help cut down on this. I've heard a couple of experienced writers say, for instance, that they question the effectiveness of the blog tours they've done, given the amount of effort they needed to put into them. Spending time and energy creating marketing plans for books that haven't been written yet may be a poor use of time, too. I've seen articles in which agents say that for fiction writers, at least, they're not that concerned about a big social media presence for new writers. They're more interested in the manuscript, itself.  (It's more important for nonfiction writers.) Saving marketing for the right time in the book's life and creating a plan that doesn't involve doing everything is another way a writer can slow down and become more productive with writing, itself.

When trying to work slow in order to improve productivity, looking for the least you can do doesn't make you lazy. It makes you more focused and could mean you could get more real work done.

Time Management Tuesday: Slow Work And Privilege

So, slow work...it's not a figment of my imagination, but there's not a lot about it out there, either.

"Slow Work"--A Lifestyle Conquers The Working World by Morgaine Gerlach at Society 3.0 (from November 23, 2016) describes slow work as a "workplace variation on the popular lifestyle movement "Slow Food." Slow Food has a national and international presence, with a very specific mission. "...to prevent the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions, counteract the rise of fast life and combat people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from and how our food choices affect the world around us." The two main articles I've seen on slow work, the one at Society 3.0 and Slow Down! How "Slow Work" Makes Us More Productive by Peter Bacevice at Time (from way back in 2012) don't have a mission statement anywhere near as clear cut. The Society 3.0 article states that slow work is "about moving through life more consciously, taking the time for the little pleasures of everyday life and dealing with mind and body spirituality."

Maybe it's just me, but I don't find that very specific or attainable. I'm not even sure what I'm trying to attain with those kinds of statements.

Suggestions From Slow Work Articles

The Time article states that slow work philosophy "urges us to punctuate our routines in ways that might initially appear to compromise productivity but actually enhance long-term creativity." That sounds like what I've called the unit system.  The Society 3.0 article includes suggestions that seem to support that.

• "Take breaks and use these short breaks for a little small talk among colleagues or networking via Xing, LinkedIn & Co."
• "Actively add relaxation periods to your everyday life, for example, a little yoga in the morning."
• "Create a short daily schedule in the morning and calculate twice as much time for each point on this to-do list than you would estimate."

The 3.0 article adds:

• Make more time for yourself within your daily work routine. 
• Vary your routine. 
• Look for a way to “break out” of the office.
• Consider “coworking” with others for a day.

Is Slow Work Only For The Privileged?

If what I've read so far is an accurate description of slow work, it sounds to me as if it is only for those who are in work positions in which they can take breaks and talk with colleagues, they can schedule extra time for the items on the short daily schedule they have the option of creating each money. It sounds as if it's only for those people who are allowed to vary their daily routine, look for ways to get out of the office, and consider coworking.

The 3.0 article concludes with '"Slow Work" can also mean simply working less. The opportunities are varying and always dependent on the individual job as well as the company. The possibilities are part-time employment, home office or sabbatical."

Well, for many people, even people who work for themselves, part-time employment and sabbaticals are not possibilities.

I'm Sorry, But I Need Something A Lot More Specific

In addition to describing slow work  as being "about moving through life more consciously, taking the time for the little pleasures of everyday life and dealing with mind and body spiritually," the 3.0 article says,  "Health and happiness are the focus of the 'Slow Movements.'" Slow work "takes the stress out of the workplace and thus leads to long-term mental and physical well being."

You know what would really lead to long-term mental and physical well being for me? Being able to get the work done that I want to do. Finding specific ways to get enough control both my work nonwork lives  so I can do more of the work I want to do. That would do wonders for my health and happiness, too.

Just because I haven't yet found anything about slow work that will help me with my work doesn't mean there isn't something there. I'm going to stay on it. As part of my slow work thinking, I'm going to consider deep work and minimalism.

The #STPStwittered

Tweeting Saving the Planet & Stuff continues. You can follow it on Twitter with the #STPStwittered hashtag or you're welcome to just follow me altogether at @gail_gauthier. And the Kindle edition of STP&S is on sale at a reduced price this month.